The Return of the Native

upon the Scene, Hand in H

loak, and shoes; his brass buttons bearing an anchor upon their face. In his hand was a silver-headed walking stick, which he used as a veritable third leg, pers

open to the heath on each side, and bisected that vast dark surface like the partin

oving spot, which appeared to be a vehicle, and it proved to be going the same way as that in which he himself was journeying. It was the single atom of life th

. The driver walked beside it; and, like his van, he was completely red. One dye of that tincture covered his clothes, th

sheep. He was one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in Wessex, filling at present in the rural world the place which, during the last century, the dodo

in itself attractive--keen as that of a bird of prey, and blue as autumn mist. He had neither whisker nor moustache, which allowed the soft curves of the lower part of his face to be apparent. His lips were thin, and though, as it seemed, compressed by thought, there was a pleasant twitch at their corners now and then. He was clothed throughout in a tight-fitting suit of corduroy, excellent in quality,

sire company. There were no sounds but that of the booming wind upon the stretch of tawny herbage around them, the crackling wheels, the tread of the men, and the f

remark about the state of the country and so on, to which the reddleman again abstractedly replied, and then again they would lapse into silence. The silence conveyed to neither any sense of awkwardness; in these lonely places wayfarers, after a first g

n for the reddleman's visits to his van. When he returned from his fifth time of

es

ho wants lo

es

om the interior. The reddleman hastened to

child ther

, I have

have! Why did

not being used to traveling, s

ung w

young

ted me forty years ago.

above mating with such as I. But there's

ason why you should not. What h

y, though perhaps it would have been better if I had not. But she's nothing to me, and I am nothi

, may

ngleb

well. What was

, and not at all well, and that's what makes her so restless. She

oking girl

ould s

towards the van window, and, without withdrawing

see much of her; and, more than that, I have no right to allow you.

One of the ne

atter who,

een talked about more or less lately? If so,

n have to part company. My ponies are tired, and I have further

leman turned his horses and van in upon the turf, saying, "Good

r the van, and, throwing a portion of it in front of the horses, made a pad of the rest, which he laid on the ground beside his vehicle. Upon this he sat down, leaning his back agains

ality of the repose appertaining to the scene. This was not the repose of actual stagnation, but the apparent repose of incredible slowness. A condition of healthy life so nearly resembling the torpor of death is a noticeable thing of its sort

high hill cutting against the still light sky. The traveller's eye hovered about these things for a time, and finally settled upon one noteworthy object up there. It was a barrow. This bossy projection of earth above its natural le

the semiglobular mound like a spike from a helmet. The first instinct of an imaginative stranger might have been to suppose it the person of one of the Celts who built the barrow,

ill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow rose the figure. Above

it, there was the dome without the lantern; with it the architectural demands of the mass were satisfied. The scene was strangely homogeneous, in that the vale, the upla

ave impressed the mind as a strange phenomenon. Immobility being the chief characteristic of that whole

alarmed, it descended on the right side of the barrow, with the glide of a water-drop down a bud, and then vanished

aring a burden, protruded into the sky on the left side, ascended the tumulus, and deposited the burden on the top.

object than theirs. The imagination of the observer clung by preference to that vanished, solitary figure, as to something more interesting, more important, more likely to have a history worth knowing than these